Monday Munchies- Five Points Pizza
So many food reviews end up being just a glorification of the product. And while that is the point of most food reviews, to entice people to frequent an establishment and give them their business, sometimes there needs to be a contrarian opinion. Here I am, about to tell you that Five Points Pizza, the folklore hero of Nashville pizza, is overrated and overshadowing of other really good pizza places around town. Now, if you’re coming in from out of town and are wanting to hit the top spots that TripAdvisor or Yelp might recommend, Five Points is most likely on any list that you’re going to find. And that shows when you go in. As I’ve said before, Friday night is our night to go out and grab some food. When Hillary was pregnant, she went through a three month stretch where it was Five Points every week. If you haven’t had the chance to check out Five Points on a Friday night, just imagine the frustration your parents felt taking you to the DMV when you turned 15 and had to wait four hours for you to test and get your driver’s permit. I would consider Five Points a “dive” due to it’s size, and that claustrophobia is increased come dinner time. Whether it’s soccer dad waiting for his to-go pizza with his three kids running around, or the out-of-towners not being able to figure out what to order, it’s never a simple in and out experience.
Now, I’m not just going to have bad things to say about Five Points, because it’s obviously a pretty decent place based on how busy it is at any time of day. The garlic knots are extremely legit. And by extremely legit, I mean really, really good. Intoxicating. We go to Gym 5, about a half mile up the road from the restaurant. When you step out of your car during operating hours, you get smacked in the face with the smell. It’s basically like the Devil telling Jesus that He could have the whole world under His power if He denied God; “Just get back in the car and drive two minutes up the road and get some knots and a slice and all of your dreams will come true,” says Satan. They’re literally what the name says they are: strands of dough that have been knotted up, dipped in garlic butter, cooked in the oven, and then tossed in garlic butter afterwards. Put it together with the marinara dip, and you have the ultimate pizza joint appetizer.
Now on to the main course- the actual pizza itself. When Hillary first moved to East Nashville, about a month before we got married, Five Points was a place we went pretty frequently, only a couple minutes from our house and could usually grab it quickly on the way home. It was above average, at best, in my opinion. I’m a pretty big carnivore, and the only by-the-slice option that I was ever in to was the pepperoni option. Their pizzas are pretty large, so we always ended up just getting a couple of slices a piece and splitting an order of knots. For me, the slices are really thin (New York style) and just don’t have much substance to them. I don’t get pizza super frequently due to trying to be halfway health-conscious, and I felt like I always came away slightly disappointed with the amount of food I got. They’re pretty big slices, but when you’re paying $4 for a slice of pizza, I would have liked to have come away a bit more full.
Some other good things about Five Points pizza; I just saw on a TripAdvisor review that they have a habanero cream that you can add to your pizza. If you put habanero anything on food, in my opinion, it’s a good idea. (Shout-out to mango habanero being the best wing sauce of all time.) So next time I go back, which will most likely be awhile because about a year later and Hillary is still burnt out, I will be requesting that. And they do a good job, as do most places in East, of highlighting some local breweries and putting their drinks on tap. As I said before, I’m not totally against Five Points (and it doesn’t matter if I was- they crush it all hours of the day) but as someone who lives over here, I think that it overshadows a lot of pizza options due to it’s online reviews of people visiting from out of town. If you’re on the east side specifically, and want some pizza to try out, go check out these options: Tailgate (obviously, I talk about it often), Castrillo’s (they have a Sylvan Park location also), and Pizzareal, which is a locally owned, family-run spot pretty close to Five Points and just doesn’t have the same pub.
SCORE: 5.6/10